Louis Wolfson (born 1931 in New York) [1] is an American author who writes in French. Treated for schizophrenia since childhood, he cannot bear hearing or reading his native language and has invented a method of immediately translating every English sentence into a foreign phrase with the same sound and meaning.
Diagnosed with schizophrenia at an early age, Louis Wolfson was placed in psychiatric institutes during his adolescence, where he underwent severe treatments, notably electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). This period left him with distrust and hatred for people, as well as a radical detestation of his native language which he refused to use. He learned foreign languages (notably French, German, Hebrew and Russian), and became used to spontaneously translating (through a sophisticated technique) whatever was said to him in English into a Sabir of these languages.
In 1963, Wolfson submitted a manuscript to the French publishers Gallimard in which he set out, in French, the principles of his linguistic system, and how he employed it in his daily life. Le Schizo et les langues (Schizophrenia and Languages) was published in 1970 in the collection "Connaissance de l'Inconscient" that had just been launched by writer and psychoanalyst Jean-Bertrand Pontalis. It generated great critical interest, due in parts to its introduction by Gilles Deleuze. Seven years later, Wolfson's mother died of complications from an ovarian tumour. The author, now liberated from her guardianship, left New York and moved to Montreal in 1984.
There, Wolfson wrote an account of the last months of their divided lives, marked by his mother's agony and his obsessive practice of betting on horses. The text — Ma mère, musicienne, est morte... (My Mother, a Musician, Has Died) — uses the same humor and staggering language of Le Schizo et les langues, but is also charged with the drama of the illness. It was published in 1984 by Éditions Navarin. The text has become scarce. He wrote a new version during 2011. It was published by éditions Attila in 2014.
Since November 1994, he has lived in Puerto Rico where he became a millionaire on 9 April 2003 after winning the lottery.
Pierre-Félix Guattari was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and ecosophy with Arne Næss, and is best known for his literary and philosophical collaborations with Deleuze, most notably Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), the two volumes of their theoretical work Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Michel Serres was a French philosopher, theorist and writer. His works explore themes of science, time and death, and later incorporated prose.
Georges Politzer was a French philosopher and Marxist theoretician of Hungarian Jewish origin, affectionately referred to by some as the "red-headed philosopher". He was a native of Oradea, a city in present-day Romania. He was murdered in the Holocaust.
Minority is a philosophical concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their books Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature (1975), A Thousand Plateaus (1980), and elsewhere. In these texts, they criticize the concept of "majority". For Deleuze and Guattari, "becoming-minor(itarian)" is primarily an ethical action, one of the becomings one is affected by when avoiding "becoming-fascist". They argued further that the concept of a "people", when invoked by subordinate groups or those aligned with them, always refers to a minority, whatever its numerical power might be.
Multiplicity is a philosophical concept developed by Edmund Husserl and Henri Bergson from Riemann's description of the mathematical concept. In his essay The Idea of Duration, Bergson discusses multiplicity in light of the notion of unity. Whereas a unity refers to a given thing in as far as it is a whole, multiplicity refers to the "parts [of the unity] which can be considered separately." Bergson distinguishes two kinds of multiplicity: one form of multiplicity refers to parts which are quantitative, distinct, and countable, and the other form of multiplicity refers to parts that are qualitative, which interpenetrate, and which each can give rise to qualitatively different perception of the whole.
Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a two-volume theoretical work by the French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, respectively a philosopher and a psychoanalyst. Its volumes are Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. Deleuze's translator Brian Massumi observes that the books differ drastically in tone, content, and composition.
A line of flight or a line of escape is a concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their work Capitalism and Schizophrenia. It describes one out of three lines forming what Deleuze and Guattari call assemblages, and serves as a factor in an assemblage that ultimately allows it to change and adapt to said changes, which can be associated with new sociological, political and psychological factors. Translator Brian Massumi notes that in French, "Fuite covers not only the act of fleeing or eluding but also flowing, leaking, and disappearing into the distance. It has no relation to flying."
Élisabeth Roudinesco is a French scholar, historian and psychoanalyst, affiliated researcher in history at E.N.S.- P.S.L ; University of Paris, in the group « Identités-Cultures-Territoires ».
Bernard Cerquiglini, is a French linguist.
Joseph Gabel was a French Hungarian-born sociologist and philosopher. His work was always strongly influenced by Marxism; he was against Stalinism and critical of the work of Louis Althusser.
Peter Szendy is a French philosopher and musicologist. He is the David Herlihy Professor of Humanities and Comparative Literature at Brown University.
Hocus Bogus is a 1976 novel by the French writer Romain Gary, published under the pseudonym Émile Ajar. The book was written after Paul Pavlowitch, the son of Gary's cousin, had been presented as the man behind the pseudonym Ajar. It asserts to tell the story of Pavlowitch's literary experiences from his own perspective, and comments on the recent success with The Life Before Us, the subsequent speculation that the author might be Gary, as well as explains his reclusiveness with the revelation that he has schizophrenia.
Louis-Frédéric Nussbaum, also known as Louis Frédéric or Louis-Frédéric (1923–1996), was a French scholar, art historian, writer and editor. He was a specialist in the cultures of Asia, especially India and Japan.
Henri Frémart was a French priest and composer. He was at Notre Dame de Paris from 1625 until 1640.
Mitsou Ronat was a French poet, linguist and specialist of literary theory.
Jacques Dars was a French sinologist and translator. He translated several works into French, including Water Margin.
Edmond Doutté was a French sociologist, orientalist and Islamologist - both Arabist and Berberologist - but also an explorer of Maghreb.
Tanguy Viel is a French writer. A resident at the Villa Médicis in 2003–2004, Tanguy Viel was awarded the Prix Fénéon and the Prix littéraire de la vocation for his novel L'absolue perfection du crime. He also won the Grand prix RTL-Lire for Article 353 du Code pénal in 2017. Other Press in New York published the translation by William Rodarmor in March, 2019. La fille qu'on appelle was one of nine novels in the second selection for the 2021 Prix Goncourt.
Auguste André Coussillan was a French historian specialising in the history of Paris. Under the pen-name Jacques Hillairet he wrote two major reference works on the subject in the 1950s - Connaissance du vieux Paris and Dictionnaire historique des rues de Paris.
Bertrand d'Astorg was a 20th-century French poet and writer.